Curran's Patriots - Bills Week 1 Preview

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Curran's Patriots - Bills Week 1 Preview

FOXBORO – What will they do!? What will they DOOOOOOO??!?!?!?!? Not to minimize the questions facing the Patriots. They are more substantial entering this season than they’ve been since 2000. But I spent the spring and summer filibustering and hypothesizing on how exactly the Patriots would deal with their departures, injuries and murder-related releases. Now, I’ll begin to find out for sure.

When the Patriots have the ball

The Bills have good players in their front-seven – Manny Lawson, Kyle Williams, Marcell Dareus and Mario Williams – but they were 31st in the league last year against the run. The Patriots – as always – will want to be diverse offensively but establishing an offensive identity as a team that can play “tougher than thou” when it wants to means they are going to pound Stevan Ridley and LeGarrette Blount a fair amount. Expect them to work the body with the run and Danny Amendola in the intermediate before going to the head down the field. Amendola, Thompkins, Sudfeld, Ridley, Vereen and Blount will be the names I’m expecting to be featured. And Brady. Brady will be involved. Bills defensive coordinator Mike Pettine was with the Jets long enough to have plenty of experience seeing Brady flustered and also having him kick his defense’s ass up and down the field. It’s not a stretch to think Pettine was hired in Buffalo specifically to bother Brady and the Patriots offense. Big day for him in Western New York.

When the Bills have the ball

Doug Marrone and his team can approach the first game of his head coaching tenure in one of two ways: hang around and play conservative; throw widow-makers from the start. I don’t know enough about Doug Marrone to anticipate which way he’ll go. But I am going to presume that letting EJ Manuel try to carry the day with his arm when you have C.J. Spiller and – to a lesser extent – Fred Jackson on your offense is a recipe for second-guessing. If Spiller doesn’t handle the ball 25 times, the Bills won’t win. Done. The Patriots may well be a more attacking defense later in the year, but in this one they’d be well-served to play conservatively to get an idea what Buffalo is all about. And for the simple reason that Manuel will likely step in dog mess on his own a few times in his first NFL start.

The kicking game

Dan Carpenter is kicking for the Bills this week as their new kicker, Dustin Hopkins, went down with an injury already. Shaun Powell is the punter. The always-solid Leodis McKelvin is their main return man. The Patriots kicking game is more intriguing. Ryan Allen beat out Zoltan Mesko for the punting job and will be punting as an undrafted rookie in his first NFL game. He also figures to be the holder for Stephen Gostkowski. So we have some unknowns to evaluate there. The Patriots announced that they re-signed Leon Washington on Saturday, so we can expect him to have an impact here. I’m dying to see LeGarrette Blount return kickoffs. Not sure if he will, but he got some reps in the preseason back there along with Shane Vereen and Josh Boyce. Julian Edelman figures to be another main return man.

Game within the game

Mike Pettine vs. Josh McDaniels. This, to me, will be fascinating. You can’t go into this game if you’re the Bills expecting to score more than 20 points. Your only shot is slowing down the Patriots offense. Do you do it by being exotic and trying to confuse Tom Brady with coverages? By playing the bully and whacking around those young receivers? By bringing blitzers? All that is leading with the chin and Brady can and has seen it all before. And he often knocks mouthpieces into the fourth row when defenses lead with their chin. The coordinators will have a busy first quarter deciphering each other’s game plans on the fly.

Patriots gotta stop

C.J. Spiller. The kid averaged 6 yards per carry in 2012 and caught 43 balls out of the backfield. He’s their best weapon. By far. Lock him down and the punts will follow.

Bills gotta stop

Danny Amendola. The only perimeter player of note who has seen an opening day in the NFL, Amendola – despite the groin tenderness he apparently has been feeling – is going to be the hub of the Patriots passing game on Sunday.

Don't be surprised if

It takes a while for the Patriots to get the separation they are expected to. It is EJ Manuel’s first game, but it’s also the first game for a ton of Patriots so expecting things to run like clockwork is a little unrealistic. (That won’t stop people from tweeting, “Same old secondary…” at me after the first completed pass on a third down).

That sums it up Patriots style

“There are quite a few new players at the linebacker spot and the secondary, guys that I haven’t played against much, so I tried to study as much film as I could on those guys so I could understand how they like to play. They’re going to establish their own identity. It is certainly not the Jets or the Ravens. Coach Pettine, yeah, that’s where his familiarity comes from, but he has different players with different strengths. How he chooses to implement his system will probably depend on how well they do. We’re kind of preparing for everything up here. We’ve established a database of plays that we’ve run against them over the years, and we’re trying to prepare for everything.” – Tom Brady on getting ready for the Bills. Johnny Unitas never needed a damn database!

That sums it up Bills style

“To give you some insight to what I talk to the players about, obviously I told the players today who the starting quarterback was. And I told the players that you’re going to get a lot of questions from the media that say “Hey, you’ve got this young quarterback playing and how do you feel about that, what do you need to do differently?” And I told the players, we don’t need you to do anything differently. We need Stevie Johnson to be Stevie Johnson. We need our running backs to be our running backs and kind of down the line and that’s what we need.”- Doug Marrone, Bills coach, on prepping with a rookie quarterback